WONDERING WHATEVER HAPPENED TO TITO AND LOLA

On a rainy day earlier this week, I was looking at the backyard and wondering about some old friends.

Recently, someone asked about Tito and Lola, the barn owls who visited last year. Is the owl box still up? Are the birds around, he wondered aloud?

Well, maybe.

You may recall that last year, my boy and I built and hung an owl box on the big eucalyptus tree in the corner of the yard and put up a vacancy sign (quiet room with a view, no smokers please).

A pair of feathered Tyto alba moved in last winter and started a family, and we were lucky enough to watch our new neighbors from the back porch.

Disaster struck in April as a bee swarm, attracted to the eucalyptus flowers, invaded the happy nest, forcing the owls to flee, leaving a chick and two eggs to perish — not a storybook ending.

Then this December, one of the big windstorms ripped an enormous, but weak, branch from the eucalyptus.

Luckily for me and my neighbors, the limb fell harmlessly on the outside of the fence.

But that got me to wondering about all the weight on that tree, and I called an arborist to check on it.

He said it needed a good pruning, and he had a crew that could do the work after the holidays.

On the appointed day, I lugged the table and chairs off the deck that surrounds the tree, moved the cactuses, succulents and other plants to safety, but left the owl box hanging on the first limb to the inside of the yard.

The tree trimming went smoothly, but the crew’s chipper truck broke down and that left a garage-sized pile of limbs and leaves filling the driveway and spilling across the sidewalk and into the street for several days — causing another worry, that a city code inspector would knock on the door with a citation for cluttering the city.

(It didn’t happen, and was also good fortune for a guy and his son who stopped and collected a truckload of green leaves to sell to local florists.)

Once the tree mess was cleared out and before I put the pots back, I figured it was time for the annual deck wash.

That night, as I was lying in the dark, listening to the night sounds, I thought I heard a familiar screech — just one, mind you — sounding like one of my bird friends.

And two days later, the deck showed several big, telltale splashes of white.

Now, this doesn’t mean the old neighbors are back and have moved in. The box is still empty.

And just the other day, we were ambling along the well-kept trail at Batiquitos Lagoon (it’s an easy walk from the lot at Golden Star Lane to the foundation’s visitor center and back), when we came across a recently deceased barn owl, whose carcass someone had gently laid on top of a post — it could have been my Tito or his love, sad to say.

And the white splashes could have been left by other birds.

Just Thursday morning during a break in the rain, I heard a cacophony of crows.

I stepped outside just in time to see a Cooper’s hawk land about midway up the tree. At the very top of the tree, two crows sputtered their outrage.

After a few minutes of the verbal abuse, the hawk set off south, flying up the arroyo with the crows in hot pursuit, name-calling all the way — it reminded me of some of our recent public discourse.

So are the Albas, Tito and Lola, back, or are the telltale signs from just another passing bird?

I hope to know soon.

Kent Davy is the former editor of the North County Times. Contact him at kent 2davy@gmail.com